andreasviklund.com

Comment from Rodney
Time: March 31, 2006, 0:25

Have you checked your raw server logs to see where the downloads are coming from (what website is referring them, which IP addresses, etc)

The raw server logs can give you a good indication of what's going on.

Comment from Bruno
Time: March 31, 2006, 1:53

Make sure it wasn't an attack. Check the IPs and that kind of stuff. If your page traffic is the same, someone is hotlinking directly to the template maybe (and that's not cool in my opinion).

You can tell what domain gave you those visits with a simple PHP script. If this strange pattern continues you should do something about it. It's way too suspicious.

Comment from ©madbull
Time: March 31, 2006, 4:12

Don't you have 'webalizer' on your server. Webalizer retrieves also what is called 'Traffic non viewed' (bots, http-requests) from the RAW-stats. In Webalizer you can easily see which is the most active referrer or bot or anything. I found downloadsmirrors pointing to some of my sites with webalizer.

Anyway sounds like you might need '.htaccess hotlinking' protection (google helps best for a script) if you have no CPanel or Plesk installed.
Mail if help needed.

Comment from James Morris
Time: March 31, 2006, 6:15

I wouldn't worry about it too much unless it stays consistant for more than a few days or unless you start seeing some unusual traffic in your raw logs. Keep in mind that you have a very popular site.

During the time frame you speak of, I gave a presentation on CMSs and used your site as a perfect example of a WordPress Blog. The audience at that presentation were all young linux users who, most of which, spend a great deal of time online in gaming communities.

Now, I wouln't claim that a significant number of downloads came from my referrals, but I would expect at least 100. Now, take that one work of mouth referral and multiply it by no less than 10% of your "normal" daily traffic. That would be a real good day in referrals, but it is possible.

Also, take into consideration that you've made a couple major announcments in the last few days. Put it all together and it's not hard to see how you could get a sizeable spike in traffic.

Granted, 51,000 is a LOT of hits. A lot more than you'll see on most sites. However, theoritically, it's not out of the question.

But again, keep an eye out for repeat IP addresses, multiple simultaneous connections from the same, or similar IPs, and keep an eye out for anything that looks unusual.

You might even want to search Slashdot and other large community sites. You never know, you might have been featured because of your contest.

If you got Slashdot'd, 51,000 downloads would be a perfectly acceptible number of downloads, and I would really be impressed that your site didn't fall victim to the dreaded Slashdot effect.

Keep up the great work!

James

Comment from LobsterMan
Time: March 31, 2006, 12:37

maybe some robot is messing with you

Comment from Koen van Gilst
Time: March 31, 2006, 13:35

I've found your template on a page that ranked really high on the del.icio.us popular list.

That site's called:
http://www.sixshootermedia.com/Pretty_as_a_Picture/templates/

Your andreas08 is really one of the best ones around and I wouldn't surprise me at all if a lot of the viewers of that page also downloaded your template.

I did that in any case and I've started using it with many good reactions from people. Thank you for designing it and letting me use it for free!

Koen

Comment from Carl Galloway
Time: March 31, 2006, 18:18

I announced my port of Andreas06 for serendipity at the same time, on my own blog (www.carlgalloway.com) and also on the serendipity blog (blog.s9y.org), my own stats showed I received 1,200 unique hits on my site, and the serendipity blog regularly gets thousands more. In addition, another user of serendipity has just used andreas06 with custom images (www.toondesign.biz). What can we say, you're a popular man.

Comment from Gogol
Time: March 31, 2006, 20:55

I don´t know if this would solve a part of the mistery, but I have used your template for http://www.guanajuatoenlinea.com a regional portal (in Mexico) with some hundreds of pages.

Comment from renee
Time: March 31, 2006, 21:55

hi andreas. i love your theme andres01 and have used it for one week went BOOM. something happened and my right sidebar is now below my left sidebar and my content is not showing.

the front page is fine but when you click on a post everything is weird. thought you should know about this…

all the best,
renee

Comment from renee
Time: March 31, 2006, 23:29

thank you very much! only if its not that much trouble of course, if it is dont worry about it i'll get another theme.

thank you for your kind offer.

Comment from Rodney
Time: March 31, 2006, 23:51

You can lookup the IP address at whois.sc

type in whois.sc/IPNUMBERHERE and it will tell you some basic details about the IP address (regional location, ISP, etc)

Comment from Jan Arroyo
Time: April 3, 2006, 4:09

I think all the troubles become 'cause your free templates are so good. You can expect many and many downloads every day. I really think at you are making a new page in the internet history because you give us all some very professional templates and really free. This side of your jobs show at internet can be an artistic and nice place to live. To tecnical view: I find links to your site in many others sites, so you will see during 2006 very much reproductions of yours free templates. And you will see how much your CSS files will be working over them to re-create them.
In the middle… Go ahead.

Pingback from htaccess, leeching and referrers at geek blog
Time: April 5, 2006, 16:29

[...] Everyone knows leeching, or stealing bandwith I guess. This topic made me digg into my files on an old harddrive for an htaccess I once used on another site. The idea of it was to keep a lot of spambots from the site and to block visitors from other (non-wanted) sites listing to me. It became a quite big list. Download the file, sit down and have a look at it. You'll soon understand the logic that is behind and see the extendability of the whole .htaccess and the power of it. It is very usefull and will definately make your db (Spam Karma) work less. Watch out the list is not complete and is almost a year old. But still very usefull. The last elements of the file might have to be changed for your own settings. [...]